Israel's security fence separates Jewish, Palestinian friends

When Ted Plavin moved to this Jewish settlement in 1989, residents warned that he was living too close to Arabs. A Palestinian man lived right behind his unfinished home, built on the remains of a Jordanian military outpost used during the Six-Day War of 1967.

But that Palestinian, Hani Amer, whom Plavin describes as a mensch -- Yiddish for "good fellow"-- turned out to be a good neighbor. He insisted that Plavin, an Orthodox Jew, share his electricity through a line run from his home. Later, Plavin ran a phone line from his house to the Palestinian's home.

These days, running any kind of a line between the neighbors' homes is more complicated. It would have to be strung through one fence, and then another to reach Amer's home, which is encircled by three fences, barbed wire and a 20-foot wall.

The odd structure, part of Israel's massive security fence separating Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, runs between Plavin's settlement, Elkana, and the nearby Arab village of Masha. But instead of simply leaving Amer on one side, the structure encloses his house in what he calls a "cage" between Jews on one side and Palestinians on the other.

In the process, it has turned him into an unwitting symbol of the anger and alienation that Israelis and Palestinians feel toward each other. A sense of hope buoyed by promises of peace in the 1990s has been lost after four years of terrorism. Whether leaders on both sides can resurrect it with bold new moves is an open question. Up and down the fence line, people once linked through business, neighborhood and even friendship are being forced to choose sides.

"We all got along. I had no problem with the Jews, and I think they'll speak well of me, too," said Amer, 47, of the days before the fence was erected. "This is all such a big mess. There used to be peace here, business. Now it looks like a war zone. My business is destroyed. My children are nervous wrecks. I have the Israeli army guarding me in this cage like I'm a prisoner."

The man he still considers a friend, who used to sip sweet tea with him on Sunday afternoons, seems just as sad. The Palestinian lives so close to the Jews that he can look into the bedrooms of settlement homes from his second-floor porch.

"Do we still see each other? No, we can't," said Plavin, an American-born banker who has lived in Israel since 1973. "I can only shout through the fence if I wanted to.

"It's absurd. It's ridiculous. It's all the result of terrorism. They [the Palestinians] were doing so beautifully that if there was no partition, and we were to live together, one day it would have been one people indistinguishable."

Four years into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has cost about 4,500 lives -- at least 1,000 Israeli, and 3,500 Palestinian -- that notion seems further from realization than at any other time in the century-old struggle between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs.

While conflict and bloodshed have long plagued the West Bank, relations between Israelis and Palestinians have been more complex. Jews like Plavin and Arabs like Amer once shared an understanding that certain values applied in life, business and politics. Israelis and Palestinians were separate and unequal, but both seemed to be moving ahead, despite their differences.

That sense of upward mobility has been destroyed by four years of terrorism and military reprisal, and sealed with the construction of a wall that has radically altered life in places like Elkana and Masha.

"I think you'll find many isolated instances of Israelis and Palestinians who were quite close before the terror began, just like you found in Elkana," said Mark Medin, Florida regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. "There were close economic relationships, close friendships.

"And I'm sure there still are good relationships in many instances, but if you're an Israeli and if you have a realistic fear that you're going to be burned alive or raped if you enter a Palestinian village, relations are going to suffer. These settlements have to focus on security now, and that limits relations."

But some local Palestinian-Americans think the fence only aggravates the deep and complex relations between Arabs and Jews.

"It's crazy, because I meet former Israeli soldiers here in Florida all the time, and they'll tell you about friendships they have with Palestinians, and yet we cannot resolve this situation," said Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, the Gaza-born director of the Miami-based American Muslim Association of North America.

"But my problem with this wall they're putting up is that you end up punishing an entire people to stop five or six terrorists," Zakkout said. "This is being built over Palestinian land, disrupting farmland, and it punishes villages that depend on Israel for their economy."

In Elkana, a community of 700 Israeli families considered an illegal settlement under international law because it lies within Palestinian territory, families are thriving, and new homes and apartments are going up in construction projects throughout the Jewish West Bank.

The Arab village of Masha, meanwhile, is a ghost town. The road that once brought thousands of Israeli customers to its markets has been sealed off. Other roads are blocked by Israeli military checkpoints, which have crippled trade between Arabs.

The town's streets are rutted and dusty, and rusting signs in Hebrew advertising clothes, food and furniture swing in the wind like something out of an old Western. The few cars that can be seen are broken down, and men, young and old, loiter on street corners.

Before the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada began in September 2000, these streets were filled with Israeli cars and pedestrians. The income disparity between the two peoples -- one of the greatest along any border in the world -- provided a good living for Palestinian merchants and huge bargains for customers from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, less than an hour's drive away.

Even after the first waves of violence broke out, Israelis drove around a dirt berm that the army built here to get into Masha. Arab merchants from Jordan, and such West Bank cities as Nablus and Hebron, also trooped into town to sell their wares. Restaurants were prosperous, said Amer and other Palestinians, who pride themselves on speaking better Hebrew than many Israeli immigrants.

A religious Zionist who says he thinks Jews have the right to settle the West Bank, Plavin saw relations progressing between Israelis and Palestinians. A passionate spokesman for development, he delights in showing visitors around Elkana.

Set on gentle, rocky slopes above the Mediterranean, Elkana offers a grand view of the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv, about 10 miles away.

The settlement's city hall is a former police station built by the British when they controlled Palestine in the 1940s. An old trench still runs through a local park, the last remaining evidence of the Jordanians who hunkered down here before being overrun in the 1967 Six-Day War. In that battle, Israel captured the West Bank -- territory previously controlled by Jordan -- as well as the Gaza Strip, which had been held by Egypt.

The Arab nations defeated by Israel during that war refused to negotiate an end to the conflict, and Israel has held onto the territory, home to about 3.5 million Palestinians, for more than 37 years.

In the 1980s, with the support of the government and then-Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, Jews began moving into the territories and forming settlements that were seen in part as defensive bulwarks against future Arab attacks. They also had religious significance because the region, known as Judea and Samaria, has many landmarks recorded in the Old Testament.

During the 1990s, a peace process that began in Oslo, Norway, raised hopes among many that a formal border would eventually lead to a Palestinian state. But Palestinians and Israelis were unable to reach a conclusion on settlements or the right of return of Palestinian refugees. In 2000, the Second Intifada began with Palestinian suicide attacks inside Israel and military incursions by Israeli forces into Palestinian towns.

Hopes for peace have again been raised by the Palestinian elections, which took place Sunday, and a planned withdrawal this year of Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip. Construction on the 437-mile security fence, meanwhile, continues.

Like many Jewish settlers, Plavin was lured by the generous subsidies the Israeli government provides to settlers and the relative affordability compared to the country's crowded, expensive cities. It was only later that he fully embraced the belief, with many other settlers, that the West Bank is part of the Greater Israel spoken of in the Old Testament.

"When I went to build my house there were no other houses up here," Plavin said. "Everyone was worried about living next to the Arabs. I said there's an opportunity. I'll take it. For 20 years there were wonderful relationships here. On Saturday, you'd take your children into the villages to see how olive oil was made. They all worked for us, with us."

But as the violence grew over the years, so did the need for security fences.

Like many settlers, Elkana's residents are divided about the fence. Some think it's necessary for security; others fear it will become a permanent border to a Palestinian state.

"For 15 years there were arguments here about whether we should have a security fence," Plavin said. "A security fence fences us in and we become ghettoized. The majority didn't like that idea. Then the intifada started and we decided we better put a fence up."

Today, while Elkana is prospering, the only local attraction in Masha is Amer's house, a rallying point for Palestinians and their supporters because of the wall and fence surrounding it. Web sites are devoted to it, and foreign dignitaries and journalists have visited. Protesters have used the wall to draw murals and make film documentaries. But few people, Plavin said, visit him or Elkana to hear their story.

Amer built his home in the late 1980s after accumulating money from farming.

"This was all agricultural land, olive trees, wheat, barley. This house was 300 meters from any other building in the area, very beautiful back then," Amer said. "It was not like it was today. I like open space."

About the same time, Jewish settlers began setting up caravans around the area -- the first step in staking out land for a settlement. Amer said he ignored them for the most part. He did construction work in settlements, which often are built by Palestinian labor.

Both his farming and construction businesses did well. But as the violence increased, business collapsed and the Israeli military sealed off the road.

As construction on the wall started, he feared that the land would be seized.

Israeli officials say privately that they think Amer and others who refuse to accept money and relocate away from the fence are being paid, or coerced, by Palestinian militants to remain in their homes for propaganda purposes.

"The choice was to evacuate two or three homes in Elkana, or uproot this man from his home," said Baruch Spiegel, an Israeli Defense Ministry adviser in charge of humanitarian issues related to the fence. "We're still trying to work this out. But this is a very complex undertaking, and with the populations so close in some cases, you run into these problems."

Like other Palestinians whose land has been appropriated by Israel, Amer said he was offered an amount of money he would not specify. He refused it, and insists that he's proud that he remains on his land.

Still, with heavy bags under his eyes, Amer concedes that he's exhausted by the ordeal. The sight of heavily armed Israeli border police examining the gate in his front yard every day both frightens and challenges his children.

"The kid is always trying to climb up the fence, go under it, scale the wall, do whatever he can to get out, like an animal in a cage," Amer said, referring to one of his younger sons. "He has discipline problems at school and I can't control him. I keep hearing Israelis say that Palestinians don't care about their children, but I didn't cage my children in.

"What I'm most worried about is that my son climbs up on the fence and one of these Israelis soldiers just goes ahead and shoots him. Of course it's no way to live, but I can't just let people take my land."

Tim Collie can be reached at tcollie@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4573.